sketches
by cristina rosales
Summary: Clary tries to draw in a park and discovers that life has changed dramatically. Set after City of Heavenly Fire.


**A/N: Remember the part on one of the books where Clary struggled to draw? Struggle** **d** **to be in touch with her inner artist? I wanted to explore the idea of her losing her artist side of her after the war.**

 **For Caesar's Palace Monthly One-shot Contest and the prompt mundane. And for you Amaris, here's a TMI fic for Christmas.**

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She sat perched on the old, wooden, park bench. The paint was rotting away, and it sagged slightly in the middle, worn from countless people squashing it. Around her the park was in the full swing of summer: two kids played in the brown, under-watered grass and their parents smiled as they watched their offspring play around the park. A young teenager leaned against the wall of the men's bathroom, and he blew a puff of smoke from the white, rolled up paper in his hands. Birds flew and twittered in the park's trees, happy to be soaking up the bright yellow rays. A pair of old ladies with huge sunhats flopping in the breeze chatted while they leaned back against their own sagging bench.

 _Before_ , she would've saw something else besides an old bench. She would've saw a silver, smooth rock washed ashore from miles away, where mermaids once sang their songs. Or a fallen tree where fairies played and danced, worn from their little feet pattering against the wood. She doesn't see that now. _Now_ she sees an old, worn, wooden, park bench with chipped paint and a sagging middle.

 _Before_ , she was an artist. Always seen with paint splatters rooted into her hair and faded graphic tees. Always carrying around a sketchbook stuffed to the brim with papers, napkins, and ripped homework, each with their own drawing etched in whirling, gray, graphite lines.

 _Now_ , she's a warrior. Black runes of battle and courage and sight decorate her arms, feet, and legs. A reminder to her that she is no longer a mundane. She's changed. She doesn't laugh as easily or argue about little things. She doesn't look at a knife with indifference or see a hammer as a building tool. No one can ignore the light of wisdom far beyond her age that glimmered in her eyes, or the scars that had marred her once perfect, porcelain skin.

Though, no one looked. They only saw a girl in black clothes with tattoos swirling on each of her limbs. They saw a hood, a no good person that their children should stay away from. A person who would rob a store without batting an eyelash. A dangerous thug who presence always spelled out trouble. They didn't notice the sorrow in her eyes or the scars the tattoos covered up.

She glanced across the dry park to the cement block they called a school. The windows were open like the doors, and a stream of kids trickled out from inside the school. Watching people was an art she had perfected. She watched how the children dashed out of the building, glee sparking in their eyes.

 _Before_ , she would've saw the children trickling out of the school as a swarm of refugees, running to a new land with hope and promise in their eyes. She would've saw a village of children running to great the merchant selling exotic items and fun toys.

 _Now_ , she only saw flocks of children running out of a cement block, and she so wanted to see something else. Desperately longing for before, she picked up her pencil, trying to draw the kids.

The pencil was a simple, wooden one – HB. The exact pencil her mother had given her on her 15th birthday. One she had used many times drawing, and it had once felt alive in her hands. A living thing that traced curves on the page, almost as if it had a mind and soul of its own.

That was _before_.

 _Now_ , the pencil was wood. _Nothing_ but wood. Not a living thing, not a stick that would sketch on its own. It was just a wooden pencil held by another person who wasn't an artist. Just a HB pencil that anyone could buy at an art store. It wasn't special.

She dropped the pencil, and it hit the ground with a _clunk_. It was hopeless. She would never be an artist again. She had black runes swirling on her legs and arms and battle scars jutting from her skin. She was a warrior, not an artist.

She will never hold a pencil like it was a soul again. She will never have paint in her hair or clay stuck to her jeans. She would now treasure a sword as much as she used to treasure a brush. She will have sweat stains in her clothes and blood split onto her shirt.

As she journeyed deeper and deeper into training, she was running farther and farther from her mundane roots. Running farther and farther away from her artist side.

 _Before_ , she was an artist. _Now,_ she is a warrior. She had traded the life of a mundane for the life of a Shadowhunter. She had given up a paintbrushes and clay for knives and blood. An artist's soul for a warrior's heart. She can not be both.

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 **Yes, I know it sucked. Please don't give me that look, and drop a review :)**


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